I'm talking about "mainstream science" which is popular science, that which the general public learns at school. that which is relied on by governments . Corporate science. I am saying that their information is never up to date.
What is your problem with homeopathy anyway? Just because it is NOT UNDERSTOOD by "mainstream science" does not make it invalid. I know for a fact that it works because I have used it successfully to treat a dental abscess.No antibiotics.(and thats only one example)
People like you want to take away choice . What makes me angry is that you know nothing about it.
Put it this way- How would you explain an Ipod to a pygmy?
Same thing.

There is no such thing as "mainstream" science. There is just science. Until you grok that there is no point in engaging you in conversation.

You bomb the majority of posts with multiple unrelated claims and challenges. This is not constructive. Until you grok that, and stop it, there is no point in engaging you in conversation.

You fail to stick to a point, move the goal posts and change the topic. This is not constructive. Until you can address a single point and stick with the topic there is no point in engaging you in conversation.

I successfully treated my dental absess with homeopathic drops. worked like magic. everytime it flared up.
Now my point is ,that if it were up to people like you,you'd have homeopathy banned, and people like me would lose that option.

It was an abcess under one of my molars for gods sake.And its excruciating
You've obviously never had one. There CAN only be ONE other remedy for something like that- antibiotics.. Sure they would have worked but I don't like using antibiotics repetitively.

What you claim to have cured and how painful it was is entirely irrelevant if you cannot reliably repeat the results. No one has ever, under suitably controlled circumstances, reliably repeated any of the claims of effect that homeopaths make.

Well there are plenty of ways to remove the perception of pain.
The advantage with the scientific approach is that it addresses the cause of the pain - the infection preventing long term healing of your abscess.

If you are treating the bacteria with 'beneficial' homoeopathic water, surely if anything you are making them healthier? they are living organisms just like you.

Yes , I think what you mean is that antibiotics would certainly have addressed the infection, and thereby the cause of the pain. Pain is only a symptom.

Homeopathics is not about the water, but what it CONTAINS.

In my case, it contained substances that killed the bacteria back enough to reduce the swelling. Mind you, I had to get it from my Dr. because the concentration available in shops was not high enough. What I got was imported from Europe.

To answer your Q about the difference between "perceiving" something vs "feeling"
it, if you look in a dictionary you'll discover that one perceives through the mind. ( Pain is felt directly through the body.)

But surely if it contained substances, it is by definition not homoeopathic? Homeopathic preparations are made by diluting the concentration of any substances by half over and over again until there is literally none left - and according to homoeopathic dogma, the more times diluted, the more 'powerful' the medicine.

100% pure water is the most powerful possible homoeopathic dose.

How do the bacteria know they are being given a lethal poison dose and not just water, if there is no substance in the water? Equally how do they know they are not being given a massive health boost with the same water? or being given the properties of whatever else has been diluted out of it in its billions of years of history?

With respect to any interactions between skeptic groups, governments and law making all we want is that until it has been proven to work beyond the placebo effect we don't want any tax payer money to be spent on it.

SG, from the way you've talked in the past I get the impression that you don't actually understand science or the scientific method. So I'm going to focus on explaining that using homeopathy as the backdrop.

Homeopathy does have a placebo effect, as does anything, including real medicine.

"It worked for me" is not evidence of efficacy. It's an anecdote. It does say "we should look into this more with decent studies". These have been done and some of them even showed some promising results. When the studies were examined by others in their field they were found to be a bit loose on some controls and when the studies were repeated with these controls tightened up the positive results were reduced back to a point that matched the likelihood of it being a placebo effect.

These controls aren't there to find a specific outcome. What these controls do do is remove experimenter bias. They remove the possibility of the desire of a specific outcome influencing the actual results.

"It worked for me" is also the argument from personal experience. When I was a kid I was treated with homeopathy for hayfever. It didn't work for me. You claim it works from your personal experience, I claim it doesn't from mine (I also claim it doesn't based on the claims of how how it's supposed to work, but that's a different thread). From your standard of evidence our 'evidence' cancels each other out.

(I thought this was going to go one point at a time)
When I hear people going on about tax payer money , I feel like asking them :Can you calculate the precise amount that comes out of your own personal income that you are having to pay towards homeopathy?
I think that's a very good question.
Because at the end of the day people only care about themselves. And I somehow doubt that your concern in all of this is really for "altruistic" reasons .

We are waiting for you to concede the point or argue against Golds rebuttal to your claim about there being a "mainstream science". You chose not to by making a further claim that "we'd have homeopathy banned"

1) "Mainstream" only means the predominant or prevailing view.
You have to understand that in this day and age that not all views get heard.

In the field of science, there are many who strike out independently because they feel passionate about discovering answers to questions,( without financial motives,) They might make important discoveries in their own right..

And then there are those who are employed by companies to find answers. the motive of a company of course is to discover a product that makes money.

The important thing to realise is that the "prevailing" or "popular" view is not necessarily the correct one! Or the only correct one.

2) ...As far as Homeopathy goes , I do appreciate that you would like to see it dismissed until "proven". Because how it works does not "make any sense" to the prevailing majority. (Please note: Does not mean it does not Work!"

But , to use me as an example, ROB- I did not say it CURED my absess, I said that I successfully TREATED it, repeatedly over 2 years whenever it flared up. Without having to resort to antibiotics. I wanted to avoid having the tooth extracted until I could afford to pay for Root canal treatment.

Are you aware why any given theory is the predominant or prevailing view?

You have to understand that in this day and age that not all views get heard.

With the way science works and the penetration of the internet in modern society this claim does not stand up to scrutiny. Anyone with a view can get heard. If the view does not hold up against current theory then typically these are the bits challenged. Unless the new theory can explain what we currently see through experiments, tests and studies then it is just not going to be taken seriously.

In the field of science, there are many who strike out independently because they feel passionate about discovering answers to questions,( without financial motives,) They might make important discoveries in their own right..

Agreed. But this is unrelated to your previous statement.

The important thing to realise is that the "prevailing" or "popular" view is not necessarily the correct one! Or the only correct one.

Agreed. The scientific method is self correcting. It is also the best tool that we currently have to determine whether a view (call it a hypothesis, that is what they are) stands up to scrutiny.

2) ...As far as Homeopathy goes , I do appreciate that you would like to see it dismissed until "proven". Because how it works does not "make any sense" to the prevailing majority. (Please note: Does not mean it does not Work!"

You have it wrong here. Having something proven to work (why did you quote "proven"?) is what the scientific method is about. Half of science does not care about how it works, just that it works. All studies with decent methodology to date have shown homoeopathy to be no better than placebo.

How it works is another area all together. But before we study the how we need to determine that it works.

Can you understand this?

If so, do you accept it?

But , to use me as an example, ROB- I did not say it CURED my absess, I said that I successfully TREATED it, repeatedly over 2 years whenever it flared up. Without having to resort to antibiotics. I wanted to avoid having the tooth extracted until I could afford to pay for Root canal treatment.

A recurring abscess for 2 years? This sounds like regression to the mean. Rob, if you agree I'll leave the explanation to you. I have to get to work.

Well I'm no dentist, I can think of nothing more terrifying for someone in the "chair" than me peering at them through the dental glasses, drill in hand...

I had a cyst on my stomach that got infected. It went through a long cycle of inflaming then subsiding getting worse and worse each time till I finally got it cut out.

I was taking nothing in the way of Antibiotics during this time (until it got really bad and took them just prior to getting it cut out).

The correlatives to the inflammation DECREASING were, walking, breathing, sitting, digesting, excreting, sleeping, the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the transit of the planet blah in the house of blah, in fact everything that occurs during the course of ones life..

The correlatives to the inflammation getting WORSE were, walking, breathing, sitting, digesting, excreting, sleeping, the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the transit of the planet blah in the house of blah, in fact everything that occurs during the course of ones life..

So if I wished I could pin any damn thing to the fact that sometimes my inflammation got better. Of course I should mention I was swimming in the sea regularly... That seawater must have the "memory" of just about everything that has ever been by now. Maybe it was that.

No that's just silly, more likely it was the transient interventions of a Deity.